Balfour

Balfour, THE RIGHT HON. ARTHUR, was born 25th July 1848, and in 1856 succeeded his father in the estate of Whittinghame, Haddingtonshire. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he entered parliament in 1874 as Conservative member for Hertford, and from 1878 to 1880 was private secretary to his uncle, Lord Salisbury, whom he accompanied to the Berlin Congress. For a while an unattached member of Lord Randolph Churchill's 'Fourth Party,' he led off the attack on the 'Kilmainham Treaty' (1882), negotiated with Lord Hartington the franchise compromise (1884), was returned for East Manchester (1885), and was appointed president of the local government board (1885), secretary for Scot- land (1886), and chief-secretary for Ireland (1887). In this perilous post, the grave of so many reputations, the 'dilettante philosopher' soon surprised the country, but especially the Irish members, by the energy with which he set himself to administer the laws and enforce discipline without fear and without favour, and apparently wholly undisturbed by invective or calumny: before the five years he held the office were out, 'bloody Balfour' was even more respected than he was hated or feared. He became First Lord of the Treasury and leader of the House of Commons in 1892, and again after the general elections of 1895 and 1900. He is LL.D. and D.C.L., has been Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and is Chancellor of Edinburgh University. He supports Bimetallism (q.v.); and has published a Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879; 2d ed. 1894), Essays and Addresses (1893), and The Foundations of Belief (1895). The latter work swiftly ran through several editions.—His brother, FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR, embryologist, was born at Edinburgh in 1851, and educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge. He soon entered upon researches on the development of the elasmobranch fishes, which threw new light on many problems of vertebrate morphology; and also took a leading part in the work of founding the then incipient Cambridge school of natural science. In 1878–83 appeared his well-known Comparative Embryology. Besides receiving many scientific distinctions, and declining tempting offers from Oxford and Edinburgh, he was appointed to a special chair of Animal Morphology in 1882. But on the 19th July of that year he lost his life while attempting to climb one of the spurs of Mont Blanc.—Another brother, GERALD, born 1853, from Eton passed to Trinity College, Cambridge. Private secretary for a time to his eldest brother, and returned as a Conservative by the Central Division of Leeds (1885), in 1895 he became chief-secretary for Ireland, and in 1900 President of the Board of Trade.